More veg

This is the mid week crop of courgettes, I'd guess around 4kg. I'm having to give them away now, the novelty of yellow courgettes delights most people who don't grow them. Next year I'll have to plant out only a couple of plants because the quantities are getting silly, certainly another 2kg picked today.

Here are some purple beans. I'm picking them twice a week as well along with the green and yellow ones. The purple have done well although the green are the best for size shape and quantity. I don't think I'll bother with the yellow next year.

The green ones fruit in great big bunches, I probably picked another 2kg of tricoloured beans mid week and about the same today.

My first ever cucumber! not bad in length if a little thin. I wasn't sure how much more it'd grow so I decided to pick it, haven't tasted it yet. Really these are rather difficult to grow without a greenhouse.

The nasturtiums on the compost heap are looking marvellous this year. I planted one but the other have come through from last years seeds.

Just two tomatoes. I'll probably get some more but many of the plants have blight so I'm not sure if they'll ripen.

I'd left a couple of artichokes that were too small and they have now bloomed, The colour of the flowers is most vivid, I'm surprised you don't see them in more gardens.

My squash are swelling which is good. I counted about eight so far, this one is the biggest at about 30cm long already.

This pair are getting bigger too. The plants like to trail southwards so next year I must remember to plant them at the top of the plot by the rhubarb.

Then the heavens opened and we had thunder and lightning. Behind the hollyhock you can see the leeks are almost underwater.

The pathways are trodden a little lower than the plot and turned into streams. After a failed attempt to leave I took a second go when there was a break in the rain and got home without getting completely drenched.

The glut

The courgettes are coming thick and fast, this little lot picked on Wednesday weighed in at 3.5Kg and I picked almost the same amount again yesterday. At least 5Kg of courgettes a week!

Likewise the french beans have stepped it up a bit too, about 4Kg of beans a week at the moment. Most of this produce is going into the deep freeze. French beans are easy to freeze, the courgettes are cooked up with tomatoes and then frozen.

The sunflower is enjoying the hot weather and looking at it's best right now.

My neighbour had some left over leeks after he'd planted his. He gave them to me and I've now been able to fill in where my earlier ones didn't take. Let's see how these ones do.

These are my cucumbers. The larger one is perhaps 15cm long but not very thick, I don't know how long I leave them growing for? The skin is quite spiny.

I've spotted about half a dozen squash forming so far, hopefully there will be a few more undetected so far. There not very big yet but will grow for another couple of months at least.

Although these ones don't look too bad most of my tomatoes now show signs of blight and the fruits themselves are not yet ripe. I wonder if I'll be able to salvage any sort of crop?

Although it looks chilli like this is supposed to be a capsicum pepper. I'll let it go on growing and see what happens to it.

Pathetic peas

All this rain and weeds are growing like mad. most of the week end has been spent having a good tidy up. The lavender in bloom around the plot post looks good, the bind weed growing through the lavender isn't so welcome.

The french beans are reaching the tops of the canes now and are in flower. The Violet has appropriately purple flowers! The yellow beans have creamy coloured flowers and the normal green beans have white flowers.

The pathetic peas. Only one plant has really got going enough to produce pods, a disappointment after last year.

I ate them directly from the pod, so sweet and tasty. I wish I had a few more.

I was worried about blight, my neighbour thought my potatoes might have it. I think they're just going over. I dug up a plant to check, fifteen smallish new potatoes, all in good condition.

There's quite a few raspberries coming, they prefer the cooler wet conditions. In Scotland we saw them growing wild in the way Blackberries do here.

This one was ready to eat which I did without even washing my hands!

Some weeds are more attractive than others but they all had to go, at least they come up roots and all from the damp soil. I now have mud ingrained into my finger nails.

The view from the compost heap. Under the green nets and with plenty of slug pellets for defence I put out my savoy cabbages. In front of that there are some more tomato plants and in the very front patch I've tried putting out some leeks although they were rather tiny.

Boat race

The noise of helicopters, pa systems and even a blimp must mean it's the boat race again. My garlic is looking good, I watered it yesterday which I think it appreciated.

First beans are getting ever bigger. Not much actually happening on the plot right now, mostly I'm planting things up for later.

The second beans are catching up. I planted up some yellow french beans in the green house, but they won't be planted out until much later.

Rhubarb row is filling out but I not big enough to pick any yet.  Undercover I also planted up some leeks from a free packet of seeds I got last year, I wonder if they'll germinate?

The stalks look good and pink but they need to get a bit longer before I pick them. I've also planted up a few new globe artichoke plants.

The strawberries are still in flower but no evidence of fruit forming as of yet. I planted a couple of sunflower seeds and some nasturtiums to put out later in the spring.

So lots planted up in the two greenhouses but nothing to eat at the moment! This time last year my peas were already sprouting and I had picked my first rhubarb. although we've had the sunshine I guess it's been generally to dry and perhaps a bit cold so far in April this year. 
I heard the live commentary on the boat race and sounded rather exciting what with swimmers and broken oars, Cambridge came home first in an event filled race.

Squashed

My leeks were completely overshadowed by the courgettes so I decided to do a bit of pruning. The stems of the courgette leaves are hollow and make a satisfying crunch when you crush them into the compost bin. I hope this give the leeks a bit more of a chance, some of them look rather squashed.

The kobocha have really started to fill out, I've nipped the ends of the longer tendrils so that the plants produce side shoots. There are already many small fruit beginning to form, the one below is a bit smaller than a tennis ball in size, not sure how long it'll be before they are ready? I also nipped the tops off the french bean plants as they had reached the top of their canes and were beginning to to grasp at the air, there will be a lot of beans ready soon.

Net gains

After the success of the strawberry nets I put a large net over the raspberries which look to have a lot of fruit developing on them. A bit difficult to see in this picture but their are two posts with a wire between them and a large net over the whole thing which is held down with pegs.
So far it seems to have worked and today I just picked my first four raspberries and a few dozen more strawberries, sounds a lot but they're only small.

Also I have now thinned out my leeks and one row has now become one and a half rows. I bought a lovely dibber at the garden centre to help me replant them, although it made good holes they mostly filled in again when I watered the leeks back in, I hope my leeks won't be too full of mud. The courgette plants are getting bigger and bigger, there are flowers ready to bloom but they aren't ready just yet.

The parsnips seem to be doing really well, I gave that area a good weeding the other day and was surprised to find a few carrots growing as well, not many but I'll see what happens to them. The mixed salad is growing well as are the second radishes, I've already planted a row of third radishes for when they are ready.

I can't remember which are my earlies and which are the main crop potatoes, the two rows look different, one has much darker foliage, I'll have to see if I can find pictures of each variety and see which is which. They're fully recovered now from that late frost but they're not yet in flower.

When clearing out the ground by the compost bin I decided to lift the onions that had been on the plot when I first got it, they were still rather small but tasted delicious roasted with chicken last sunday.

It's a sign!

Plot 68 has two new signs, a birthday present from my Dad. He made them himself and painted them in several coats of bright green paint, the colour of the kitchen cabinets in about 1988. I saw one of the site inspectors as I was carrying them in, he said their ought to be a competition for the best plot sign.
The other thing you might spot in this picture down by the shed is my new mini-greenhouse. It cost £9.99 from Argos and is neither mini nor a green house as such, more like a plastic bag that goes over a few shelves. I had seen similar things for germinating seeds so looked online at Argos to see what they had, I didn't want anything too big as I planned to cycle home with it, the mini two-teir greenhouse was ideal so I reserved it and went to pick it up. I was rather surprised by the size of it, opening the box I found that it was the trays that made it so large as they were in one piece, there was no way to cycle with the box so in the end I took it to the plot on Thursday lunchtime by tube from Victoria to Putney Bridge and walked the rest of the way which took just over an hour in all.

Today I built the greenhouse and then went to the garden centre to get some compost and seed trays. I've planted up two types of courgettes, dwarf beans, french beans and some savoy cabbage all in trays which I've left to germinate. It was surprising how much warmer it felt in greenhouse, I do hope this works.
Out on the plot I could see that the weeds have been growing a pace, the seem to have done best in the area that I spread the horse manure on earlier this year, which begs the question were the seeds in the manure or has the manure enriched the soil to make the weeds grow? I don't know but it'll make me think twice before doing this again. When weeding I discovered that I have got some leeks after all, they are absolutely tiny like weedy bits of grass, I hadn't seen them before because they're so small and there are so many weeds. Also with closer inspection the parsnips have germinated as well which is good news as I was beginning to wonder if I'd done something wrong, the only vegetables that haven't come through are the carrots which I will give a bit longer and have some more to plant still anyway and the perpetual spinach. I'm giving up on the spinach I think, I'm not sure if I planted it too early or too deep but not a single thing has yet sprouted and they are in a very clear patch next to the radishes which are doing fine.
After all this weeding and sowing I then decided to start my herb garden along the top of the plot, I've planted seeds for lavender, thyme, rosemary, sage and flat leaf parsley. Much cheaper than buying plants, lets see if they grow.

What a difference a day makes

A few more daffodils in bloom

A day later and a bit more sunshine and spring has sprung a little bit more as you can see.

A warm sunny afternoon so I planted some seed tapes - The seed tapes have ready spaced seeds on them so although I'll have to thin them a bit it'll be much easier than hand sown seeds. They were also very easy for planting, just make a shallow trench, roll out the seeds and cover them over. Today I've plant parsnips, radishes, leeks and perpetual spinach, they all came in 5m long tapes which is just short of one row on my plot, in fact the parsnips did fill a whole row either they were a longer 5m or the plot narrows at that point.

I also planted out some garlic cloves to finish off the onion set rows from yesterday, I just used a regular shop bought head of garlic split up - as the Vegetable And Herb Expert book suggests, it goes on to warn you about using your garlic very sparingly 'or you'll be put off forever', rubbing a salad bowl with one clove then discarding it is apparently enough to start with 'then if you have lost a little of your garlic fear, you can try using crushed garlic on meat as the Continentals do.'